


a better version of forever that never gets boring

by persephassax



Series: Reunions: a ten year anniversary commemoration [2]
Category: High School Musical (Movies)
Genre: 10 year reunion, F/F, Gen, M/M, School Reunion, lightly tapping the fourth wall, oops i did it again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-09-26 09:16:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9879857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persephassax/pseuds/persephassax
Summary: Five years and five again, and despite everything, Ryan would never have been able to imagine this: being here, now, feeling like this.





	

**Author's Note:**

> title comes from a softer world [1228](http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=1228)
> 
> ten year reunion sequel to a promise instead of a regret.
> 
> thank you for all your support, friends. this wouldn't exist without you.

The doors of East High are wearing a new coat of paint well. Though no more imposing than the last time Chad was here, they are certainly more cheerful. The banner reading “Welcome Class of 2008!” is outside this time, and the balloons stand proudly in bouquets of red and white on either side of the doors.

“Mm. Much better,” Ryan says from his side. Chad looks over at him, and smiles, a propos of nothing at all. He reaches out a hand for one of Ryan’s and threads their fingers together. Ryan flashes him a quicksilver grin, and pulls him close with their joined hands.

“It all comes down to the wine, you know,” Chad intones, with a mischievous smirk, “The whole evening is wasted if the wine isn’t any good.”

Ryan throws back his head in a laugh. The humor playing between them is making them both giddy. It’s been a long time since they were back in New Mexico, never mind at East High. While the Evans empire still has its seat in Albuquerque, rather than visit Ryan’s parents, the elder Evans come to visit them, flying out to New York. It gives Mrs. Evans an opportunity to go shopping––and take Ryan with her. Sharpay has moved to the west coast (“Still keeping the continent between the two of you,” Ryan jokes, while Chad rolls his eyes) doing some acting, but mostly putting her sharp mind and steely will to work as one of LA’s more fearless event organizers. (“There’s no event so big, that Sharpay can’t make it bigger,” Chad usually jokes, while Ryan rolls his eyes.) Sharpay always makes a big deal about how great it is to get away from LA and the lights, and how New York is so much more  _ civilized _ , but from the moment she touches down she’s already complaining about missing LA.

Chad’s mother moved back to the East Coast to be close to her sister. So the Danforth-Jones clan is all in the tri-state area, with Chad’s aunt in a Connecticut suburb and Chad’s mother in a small, well kept house in New Jersey. They go out to Red Bank once a month for Sunday dinner at Mrs. Danforth’s. In the summer, they sit out on her back porch with cold drinks as the night settles in, telling familiar stories and talking about current events to the soothing sound of occasional passing cars and the garden coming to life with nighttime insects. Ryan hopes that sometime soon they’ll manage to settle everything down enough that he can start asking Mrs. Danforth for advice on how to keep a garden, since the flowers and herbs and occasional edible that make hers into an ordered wilderness have completely enchanted him.

The day has left behind a lingering warmth in Albuquerque and Ryan is in shirt sleeves, forgoing a jacket, the collar open at the neck. Chad is in grey slacks and a t-shirt, a linen jacket as a nod to formality. Without imitating the old Evans twins’ color coordinated outfits, they compliment each other pleasantly in shades of blue, grey, and cream.

They laugh their way through the hallway towards the cafeteria, after Chad asks Ryan, “Wait, where are we supposed to say Sharpay is this time? I thought for sure she’d come to complain about the subpar planning and execution of the event.” 

Ryan tries to frown at Chad but can’t suppress his grin, “Well, it can’t be Paris. That’s where she was last time. She can’t be so pedestrian as to  _ revisit _ a location.” 

They’re still giggling as they reach the folding table, disguised under a cheap yellow cloth, and name tags are scattered across the top. A familiar face is framed by light brown hair, and Chad has to think a moment before he can move past smiling stupidly about the hand still holding fast and warm in his. 

“Millie!” he says, “How are you? They have you on the table again? Is someone bringing you snacks and wine?” 

Ryan looks confused, but is still smiling. Chad’s serious tone on his last question makes him let out a short laugh. 

“If they aren’t letting you, we can sneak some out here for you,” Ryan says conspiratorially, as he pretends to feint looking for their name tags. By chance, he spots Chad’s and grabs it presenting it to him triumphantly. 

Millie laughs at the two of them, a surprisingly husky sound. 

“No, no. I offered to do the table since I have to get home soon. I left the husband with the kids tonight, and that’s a guarantee that they’ve all had too much sugar and too much pizza already.” 

Her smile makes the corner of her eyes crinkle and Chad grabs Ryan’s name tag off the table. 

“Well, I hope they saved you a piece,” Chad concedes. 

“Me, too. But you guys have a good night! Enjoy yourselves!” 

“We will. Thanks,” Ryan says with a warm smile and Chad hums in agreement lifting a hand in goodbye as Ryan drags him away. 

When they’re stepping through the doors, taking in the paper garlands and the little clusters of red and yellow draped tables, Ryan asks, “Who  _ was _ that?”

Chad looks at him, taking in his puzzled expression. 

“Millie, she used to be a cheerleader,” Chad rolls his eyes at Ryan’s raised eyebrows, “ _ Ugh, _ she ran the table last time! I didn’t remember who she was and she was one of the nice ones. I felt bad. But she looks like she’s doing well for herself.” 

Chad shrugs bashfully. For all that the five year reunion brought them back together, they never talk about it. High school rarely makes a major appearance in their conversations, though they keep each other up-to-date with the various and sundry friends and acquaintances they’ve shared over the years. 

They make their way toward the refreshments table, this time manned by a caterer Chad doubts is old enough to legally drink any of what he’s pouring. There are a two bottles, and a can on display, and a bin of ice with the non-alcoholic drinks. A sign lists the drink prices and Chad thinks that they really should have gone the route of drink tickets. The thought that he has listened to Sharpay hold forth on the various sins of event bars steps on the heels of first. Meanwhile, Ryan pulls out two crisp bills, and asks for two glasses of white. He puts his fifteen dollars on the table, with a smile and wink, and gracefully accepts the glasses with a demure “thank you”. He hands one to Chad and then grabs his free hand and heads off into the crowd. 

They’re standing next to a table lamenting the music choices when a voice rings out “Chad! Ryan!” 

They turn together and find the slim, dark haired figure of Gabriella waving at them. Her cheeks are rosy and she’s smiling. She’s unaccompanied, and dressed as sensibly as ever. Gabby at 28 is achingly similar to Gabby at 18 (or at 26). She’s got the same sweet expression. She’s got the same flyaway dark curls. Whip smart, Ryan knows that she’s still stealing people’s dreams and breaking their hearts and that not a single one of them can hold it against her.

“Hey, Gabby,” Chad says next to him, and even as he turns to face her, his arm slides around Ryan’s waist and he gives him a brief squeeze, unconscious. 

“I’m so glad you’re here. How are things with you guys? I didn’t come last time and I was so worried that it would be weird,” Gabriela leans in and hugs Chad, and his arm slips from around Ryan’s waist to make room for her, quick squeeze, one-and-done, and then she’s turning towards Ryan with her arms out and he pulls her in for a tight, whole body hug. 

Being in the cafeteria, with the same horrible institutional lighting––though now they’re LEDs rather than fluorescents––surrounded by the strangers people he didn’t know in high school grew up to be, Ryan has a sense of standing just a little outside of himself. He can feel Gabby warm and small, in his arms, the smell of her shampoo and the familiar presence of Chad standing next to him, but at the same time he can’t quite feel it all the way through, it hasn’t permeated the layers of whatever exists between his skin and his soul. 

He feels, suddenly, acutely, the years that have passed between that first fateful musical, when some other girl who looked like the woman standing in front of him took Troy Bolton by the hand and changed the way every single one of them saw themselves. How many years and changes have unrolled between the quiet, sad, uptight boy who felt very nearly free, dressed all in white on a baseball diamond at Lava Springs, someone who could never have believed, for all his dreaming, that he would be standing now, happy and at ease, beside the boy who dared him to prove himself on a field he’d abandoned long ago. 

For all that he’s left that strange character behind, he knows that the boy lives on inside him, that he’s still dreaming, and this dream––the one that he can feel with the flesh and blood of his body––is no more real to that boy than that boy is to this somnambulant gilded present. 

He lets Gabby go and returns her smile, still half a step behind himself. 

“Things are well, how about you? Still tormenting undergraduates?”

Gabby rolls her eyes at him––the years have rubbed away a little of her shine and the steely, powerful parts of her are more exposed, durable and sharp. 

“I do not  _ torment _ them,” she says. 

“But you do break their hearts,” Chad chimes in, teasing and playful.

“Seriously? That was  _ one time _ , how was I supposed to know that ‘getting coffee’ had nothing to do with the course material, and was really a date!” Gabriella’s defense lacks in true exasperation. The fact that she’s using scare quotes is a dead giveaway that the joke stuck the landing. 

As a PhD candidate in Math at MIT, she’d encountered a few mishaps with her undergraduate charges as an instructor. Ryan remembers coming home to find Chad on the phone and then a few days later Gabby showed up at their front door in New York, overnight bag in hand. She had the haunted look of underfed, underslept graduate students everywhere. She was 25, and a shining star in her field, and Chad and Ryan made a little space for her in their own overworked lives to breathe. 

“How’s that guy, John? James?” Ryan hears Chad ask. 

“Jaime, as you well know. He’s great, he would have come this weekend, but he had to give a paper at a conference in Prague,” Gabby turns a light pink at the question and gushes with the unselfconscious enthusiasm that draws people to her. 

Chad nudges Ryan quickly and stage whispers, “Would Sharpay like Prague?” 

Ryan rolls his eyes and grins back, “Too bohemian, you know she won’t settle for less than Dubai at this point.” 

“Bearing the news of Sharpay’s regretful absence, yet again?” Gabby asks and Ryan remembers that while high school defined them in so many ways and the history can never be extracted from their relationships, Gabby has been a friend to both of them for much longer than the two years they shared in school. 

“Who else is here?” Gabby asks. 

“We actually just got here,” Chad answers, and Ryan nods. 

“Kelsi said she’d be here, and I think Taylor said she’d fly in, but I’m not sure of anyone else,” Gabby added.

Ryan nudges Chad and asks, “Are any of the jock squad going to be here?” 

“Uh–– I think Zeke is going to be here. Jason is around, but I don’t know what he’s up to these days. Troy is coming down off the side of whatever mountain he’d climbed up to rejoin civilization, however briefly.”

“What’s Troy been up to? I haven’t heard much from him since California,” Gabby says.

The phrasing makes Ryan swallow to avoid an inappropriate giggle from escaping.  _ Since California _ , is a much nicer way of saying,  _ after I dumped him in college _ . Ryan knows that everyone thought that Troy going off to Berkeley to be near Gabby was a huge mistake. That he got in was impressive, but to choose the school for the girl was only ever going to end in heartbreak. Gabby was always too smart for him, even if she was good for him, all told. 

“He’s running a youth program,” Ryan offers. 

Chad picks up, “He got really into the outdoors, spent a few summers hiking and camping in Colorado, and ended up transferring to UC Boulder. He did some kind of environmental program and then started working with a non-profit to take underprivileged youth out camping during the summer.” 

Ryan watches the way Chad’s face goes through expressions as he talks about Troy. Like any brothers, they’ve done each other real damage, but through all of it, they love each other fiercely. Chad always sounds like he’s making fun of Troy a little bit, for hiking mountains with kids from the inner city. But Ryan can see the way it’s a weak facade to cover the pride he carries in his heart for his friend. Ryan will admit, if pressed, that he’s surprised by Troy’s choice, but he’s nevertheless glad to know that Troy has ended up doing something unquestionably decent with his stubborn, open character. 

Gabriella smiles, and there is something nearly wistful in her face. Ryan knows that lost love, especially that first one, always burns in your heart. He reaches out and slips his hand in Chad’s and gives it a squeeze, and thinks that he’s been unaccountably lucky. Chad looks over at him, a question in his eyes, brow nearly furrowed, but Ryan just smiles at him and holds on and Chad smiles in return, and turns right back to chatting with Gabby.

Ryan is drifting, letting the low hubbub of the crowd surround him, while the familiar sounds of Gabby and Chad buoy him up, when all of a sudden, there’s a sudden sharp noise and someone comes barreling through the crowd and crashes straight into him. He’s laughing before he’s even realized what happened, because the sound and smell and feeling can be only one person. 

“Ryan Evans, you unbelievably jerk,  _ I have missed you _ ,” Kelsi looks up at him, her face framed by her brown curls. She’s flushed from her dash across the room, and they’re both laughing and hugging, and not-quite-able to let go of one another. 

Finally, after they’ve both managed to catch their breath, they finally release each other. Ryan is surprised by how much he  _ has _ missed Kelsi. Their four years at Juilliard seem like a lifetime ago, all of a sudden, even though he can look at her and still see her the way she was when they first met, when they worked together in school, when they worked together over the summer, when they first arrived in New York City knowing they were going to stay. 

Ryan knows it is treasonous, but Kelsi is everything to him that Sharpay could never be. His sister is a force of nature and he is happily hers to command. But Kelsi was the one who taught him what it was like to have a partner-in-crime, rather than a boss. Grinning stupidly at her, he’s suddenly grateful for all the people in his life he would go to war for. 

When he finally tears his eyes away from drinking in Kelsi’s ridiculous grinning face, he catches sight of the strong, slim figure making its way up behind her. The woman is tall, her smooth black hair bobbed at her chin, and she has the posture of a ballerina, with the musculature of a modern dancer. 

He smiles, perhaps more tentative than welcoming, and says, “Hello, Michelle, how are you?”

Kelsi has been with Michelle for years at this point, they met when Kelsi moved to San Francisco to work on developing a musical at the American Conservatory Theater. Michelle dances with the Robert Moses’ Kin dance company, and she’s an intellectual powerhouse in addition to being a superb dancer. Ryan is ever so slightly terrified of her and is convinced that she thinks him frivolous and maybe a little stupid. Chad will just pull him in close and, while Ryan’s brain goes a little fuzzy with the warmth and the smell of their detergent and Chad’s cologne, will say that  _ of course _ Ryan is frivolous, and that furthermore he has no desire to read social theory books, and given both his disinterest and his dyslexia, isn’t it really better for all of them that he doesn’t? Ryan will grumble something about not wanting to be  _ uncool _ , like reading Judith Butler has ever made anyone cool, and hold Chad tight. 

“Hey, Ryan,” she says, her voice warm and quiet, “I’m pretty good. How are you?” 

Ryan lets the excitement of the moment get the better of him and says, with a laugh, “I’d be better if I didn’t have some lunatic squeezing the life out of me.”

Kelsi lets go of him and smacks him on the arm, hard, and while he’s laughing and rubbing the spot, Michelle extends one perfectly muscled arm and pulls her firmly back by the hips. 

“That’s definitely something I can help you with,” she says with a small laugh of her own. 

“Chad!” Kelsi shouts, “They’re plotting against me! You have to help me.”

Chad steps close and then past Ryan and he comes up to give Kelsi a hug, and then reaches out an arm and hugs Michelle, too. 

“Hey Kels, Michelle,” there is laughter in his voice, “How are you? It’s so good to see you.”

Kelsi is squeezing back tight. Michelle’s hug is shorter, but looks firm. 

“When are you guys coming out to San Francisco?” Michelle asks as Kelsi continues to hold onto Chad. He squeezes her hard one last time, and she lets go.

“Yeah, when are you guys gonna come visit?” as she calms from the excitement her voice gets quieter and Ryan suddenly has a vivid recollection of the way she looked in high school. He sees a small girl, with Kelsi’s same eyes, hat pulled down further than it needed to be to hide them, yet they nevertheless shone brightly from where she watched people from under her fringe. Gone is the patchwork art kid costume, but the penchant for vests and bootcut jeans is still there. The woman in front of him is much more like the one he spent four years with in New York, but she’s so much more at ease; with herself, with her surroundings. He sees the way that Kelsi and Michelle don’t even need to be touching and can still seem like they’re part of the same unit, and he wonders if this is how Mrs. Danforth feels when she looks at her son and him when they go to her house for dinner. 

Chad has stepped back from Kelsi and Michelle to include Gabby. She and Kelsi are hugging, warm if with less enthusiasm than the ones shared between Kelsi and Ryan, and Kelsi and Chad. 

“So this is the place you all materialized from,” Michelle says from Ryan’s right. When he looks back to her, her expression is smooth but amusement plays at the corners of her eyes, and he’s sure the second he looks away she’s going to be smiling. 

“Well, yeah, but it was less disembarking from the mothership and more ridiculous high school cliches,” he replies. 

“I mean, you and Kelsi were obviously the theater kids. Chad was a jock, of course. Kelsi said something about a Gabriella and some friend of Chad’s named Troy changing the whole school?” 

Michelle sounds like she doesn’t quite believe it, and Ryan looks at her for a long moment. Over a decade later, and he thinks he understands how people don’t believe it. But being fifteen has never been easy, not for anyone, not in any time or place, and Troy and Gabby really did change their world, completely. 

“Well,” Ryan says, and thinks he can relish this moment, “Troy and Gabby basically de-segregated our school. Suddenly we had jocks in our theater productions, and that had the mathletes and the basketball team conspiring together to try and bring everyone back into the fold, everyone in their rightful place, but all these various secrets came out. Some jocks like to bake, some white girls like to breakdance, you know the drill. Meanwhile my sister wasn’t ready to let go over her title as leading lady and Ice Queen of East High, and kept trying to steal Troy away from Gabriella. And then we all learned to love ourselves and live our truths.”

He nods solemnly at Michelle, who raises an incredulous eyebrow at him. 

“It sounds like some kind of made-for-TV movie.”

Ryan shrugs, “Mm, that was just the first time. The next summer, after my sister threw me under the bus, I had to prove my manliness to Chad in a baseball game. It was all very homoerotic, now that I think back on it.”

This time Michelle laughs, and Ryan feels the tension in his shoulder loosen. 

He never tells the story of that summer at Lava Springs, or about everything that happened with Troy and Gabby and Sharpay. When high school was over, he got out and got as far away from it all as he could. In New York he had Sharpay, and Kelsi, and he danced. 

“Are you working on a new show at the moment? Kelsi hasn’t kept me in the loop with what projects you’re working on right now,” he asks. 

Michelle is still smiling lightly as she gives an elegant roll of her shoulders, “We’re actually off season, so Kels and I are taking a bit of a vacation. I get to finally see this place called Albuquerque you all hail from.”

Ryan laughs, even though it isn’t that funny, because New Mexico is home and almost never worth thinking about, like all places that you take for granted

“How about you guys? How are things going with the center?” Michelle asks, eyes firm on his, and bright with interest.

Ryan is immediately flush with excitement, as he is whenever someone asks him about their work, and surprised that she cares, even though he knows he shouldn’t be.

“Things are starting to really come together!” he can’t help but enthuse, “Now that we’ve got the space sorted out we’re starting to get people coming through. I’ve got a few people I’m working with individually, and that Chad’s seeing as well, and with the studio space I’ve got a community yoga class that meets once a week. It’s starting to fill up and I’ll probably have to either pick a night to do another one.”

“That’s fantastic!” 

Ryan finds himself grinning like a bit of an idiot and feeling a flush creep up his cheeks, when a commotion grabs both their attention. 

Ryan and Michelle turn along with the rest of their little group and find people nodding and parting the way for someone. Ryan catches sight of dishwater blond hair and knows immediately who it is.

He respects the moment and leans into Michelle to whisper to her, “You want to know what made-for-TV movie heroes look like when they grow up?”

Michelle cuts her eyes to him with an interested look and a raised eyebrow and he reigns in a grin, making it a close-lipped smile. They turn back to the event, and, sure enough, there is Troy Bolton approaching them. 

The warmth that Ryan unconsciously considers a part of him steps away from his left side and Chad steps toward Troy, in two strides each they’ve got their arms wrapped around each other, hands pounding on backs, and “hey mans” and “how you beens” shuttling between them. It’s funny to see Troy here. Ryan and Chad have been out to Colorado to visit him, but the last time they stood in this cafeteria together, Ryan was still working through his jealousy––that this  _ boy _ could so thoroughly upend his life, that  _ this boy _ could somehow come between him and his sister. 

Troy Bolton is someone that Ryan has made his peace with, but all the memories of what high school felt like have returned in emotional technicolor and he’s surprised at the ways in which the expected awkwardness and discomfort don’t materialize along with Chad’s best friend. The man in front of him has shaggy hair, a close shaven face, and looks as uncomfortable in semi-formal wear as Troy ever has, except that he’s grown into his shoulders. Ryan can see where Troy didn’t manage to get all the dirt out from under his fingernails and the cuticle beds, and he suddenly remembers Troy toting his dad’s golf clubs half a lifetime ago and something like affection rushes through him. 

He steps away from Michelle and towards Chad and Troy, and when they pull apart, Troy catches sight of him over Chad’s shoulder and steps around him to pull Ryan into a tight hug, although theirs lasts only a fraction of the one he shared with Chad. 

“I see they pulled you off the mountain,” he says as they let go. Troy laughs.

“Yeah, my mom said something about forgetting what I looked like,” he says bashfully, “And that she had stuff of mine that she wanted to throw out and this would be my last chance to decide if there was anything I still wanted to keep.” 

Troy shrugs, and Ryan smiles at him. 

“It’s good you’re here,” he offers. 

There are so many people here that he hasn’t seen in months or years, and he can’t think of a single thing to say. He looks just past Troy and sees Chad and Chad smiles at him and he smiles back. He pulls a face at his boyfriend trying to convey something along the lines of “We’re here” and “ _ We’re _ here” and “we’re  _ here _ ” all at once and from the eye roll he receives in return he things he managed to get the point across. Troy moves past him and towards Kelsi and Michelle and Chad moves back into Ryan’s space. Ryan grabs his hand, and leans into him quickly as they watch Troy make small talk while Gabby hovers awkwardly on the edge of their conversation. 

“How does it feel to be back?” Chad’s voice rolls familiar over Ryan’s shoulder, and he presses back into him to feel the vibration of his speech through his bones as well as his ears, “Better or worse than last time?”

Ryan thinks for a second. 

“Well, I don’t think I’m going to get a live-in boyfriend-slash-business partner out of this reunion, so I’m not sure,” Ryan says with a sigh. 

He makes sure to keep his gaze averted for a second longer than necessary, and is rewarded, when he does look back at Chad, with the tail end of his epic eye roll at Ryan’s so-called “unnecessary penchant for drama.” Ryan smiles at him and he can feel the stretch in his cheeks, the force of how much he loves this man imposing itself on his face. He suddenly thinks,  _ “I never smiled like this in this building before.” _

“I could never have expected any of this,” he finally says, his voice pitched low, and Chad has to lean in to hear him. 

“What do you mean? Jocks and drama kids being friends? Didn’t we prove that three times over in high school?”

Ryan shakes his head slightly. 

“Being here, with you,” he takes a quick breath, “Being this happy.”

Chad’s arms tighten around him. They’ve talked about it before, in the dark of night, when they’re pressed as close together as two people can, open and honest and scared, keeping each other together with skin touching skin. Ryan has never wanted for anything in his life, but feeling incomplete has always been a part of him. 

Chad has never known the kind of luxury and easy living that Ryan is so accustomed to, but love and friendship and acceptance didn’t become strangers to him until much later in life. 

Ryan likes the way they compliment each other; Chad’s unwavering affection, the tonic that makes everything Ryan does possible, and Ryan’s steadfast support and near senseless devotion the bedrock that Chad can build on.

Ryan looks back over at their friends, and sees that Zeke is now among them, swinging Kelsey around while Michelle laughs, and Gabby smiles. Troy is looking over at them, and he looks a little lost. When their eyes meet, Troy looks away quickly, a slight blush on his cheeks.

Ryan turns into Chad fully, looping his arms around his waist. Eventually they’ll go home to Ryan’s parents’ house, and tomorrow they’ll endure alternately Mother’s fussing and Dad’s scrutiny over dinner. Then they’ll fly back to New York and pick everything back up at the center: the classes, the clients, the kids, the program with the Boys’ and Girls’ Club. They’ll go for dinner with Chad’s mother in Jersey. They’ll dodge all the families’ questions about summer versus autumn weddings, and Sharpay’s demand that they let her make it the event of the season. 

Soon Ryan will go back to fretting about the question he wants to ask and the ring in his locked office drawer even though he already knows the answer.

But tonight they’ll laugh with old friends, and they’ll drink mediocre wine. Maybe they’ll invite them out to the Tractor Brewing Co., or maybe they’ll just sneak off by themselves. They’ll stay out later than they should, and sneak into the Evans’ house like they’re 16 and in danger of getting grounded. They’ll fall asleep in Ryan’s childhood bed, wrapped tight and close.

**Author's Note:**

> So that's the 10 year reunion. I have a bit of an interlude where we get the story of how Kelsi and Michelle came to be. But that's partially just because I need more femmeslash in my life. And I want her to have a beautiful, dancer girlfriend and I'm in fandom for the wish fulfillment. I apologize for nothing.
> 
> To everyone who commented on a promise instead of a regret, I cannot possibly thank you enough. I'm slow as hell, but know that each and every one of your comments and your kudos made this fic a reality. <3


End file.
